The invention relates to electronically controlled household sewing machines, and more particularly, to such a sewing machine which has the capability for lateral feeding in addition to longitudinal feeding according to information retained in a static memory.
It is known in the prior art, to provide for sewing machines having lateral feeding capability. There is, for example, in the Japanese Patent Publication No. 27028/65, applied for Dec. 24, 1963, a disclosure of a mechanical sewing machine wherein fabric may be fed laterally by a lateral motion of the sewing needle while in a work material, to produce, for example, a random pattern having an extra wide bight. There is also shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,561,382 of Ketterer et al, a sewing machine having a removable cam mechanism which influences motion of the needle bar and needle attached thereto while in the work material thereby to effect lateral shift thereof. More recently, my U.S. patent application Ser. No. 858,497, filed Dec. 8, 1977, disclosed a means for economically converting an electronically controlled sewing machine to obtain lateral feeding or a limited degree of lateral patterning.
There is also a body of prior art in the class of sewing machines known as needle feed machines. This prior art relates to a particular type of industrial sewing machine which normally includes a needle bar mechanism oscillatable in the line of feed while undergoing endwise reciprocation. Normally, an industrial sewing machine having a needle feed is dedicated to this particular type of operation, without potential for conversion to any other type of operation.
Heretofore, household sewing machines have been limited to the formation of ornamental patterns having a pattern width, or bight, determined by, among other things, the maximum relative displacement between the sewing needle and the loop taker at which a stitch may be formed. Thus, a wide variety of ornamental patterns may be formed which are however, relatively narrow although theoretically of infinite length. An ideal situation would be where a sewing machine is able to stitch over a large area not necessarily confined to narrow boundries. There are special purpose sewing machines, such as quilting machines, which are able to cover a large area but are well out of the scope of the usual household sewer. What is required is a means for obtaining in a household sewing machine automatic implementation of patterns which exceed the capabilities of heretofore known family sewing machines with respect to size and complexity.